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The Heartbeat

The best companies I work with have a heartbeat, they operate on a pace and a cadence and a rhythm that is perceptible to everyone in and around the company. I am not talking about just product and engineering, although you [...]  Read more

The Heartbeat

The best companies I work with have a heartbeat, they operate on a pace and a cadence and a rhythm that is perceptible to everyone in and around the company. I am not talking about just product and engineering, although you [...]  Read more

a16z crypto

I guess this is the week I am going to compliment our competitors in the VC business. That meme started yesterday in my post on Benchmark and will continue today. Yesterday afternoon my friend Chris Dixon announced a new VC [...]  Read more

Slowing Down To Speed Up

I saw this chart in Recode’s piece on Benchmark : if("undefined"==typeof window.datawrapper)window.datawrapper={};window.datawrapper["aV5nW"]={},window.datawrapper["aV5nW"].embedDeltas={"100":664,"200":600,"300":550,"400":550,"500":550,"700":525,"800":525,"900":525,"1000":525},window.datawrapper["aV5nW"].iframe=document.getElementById("datawrapper-chart-aV5nW"),window.datawrapper["aV5nW"].iframe.style.height=window.datawrapper["aV5nW"].embedDeltas[Math.min(1e3,Math.max(100*Math.floor(window.datawrapper["aV5nW"].iframe.offsetWidth/100),100))]+"px",window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if("undefined"!=typeof a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var b in a.data["datawrapper-height"])if("aV5nW"==b)window.datawrapper["aV5nW"].iframe.style.height=a.data["datawrapper-height"][b]+"px"}); It’s an interesting chart because it breaks out new investments and follow-on investments, both of which have been falling at Benchmark for going on [...]  Read more

Airbnb and NYC

There is a bill in front of the NYC City Council called Intro 981 that will impose reporting requirements on Airbnb and their hosts in NYC. There will be a public debate on that bill this coming week. The backdrop [...]  Read more

Some Words Of Wisdom

I saw this tweetstorm today from Suhail Doshi, founder of Mixpanel. 1/ Getting my first 100 customers always felt like a puzzle. The next 1000 seemed unreachable. Besides, how can you get feedback to make the product better w/o users? [...]  Read more

Thirty One Years

Today is our thirty-first wedding anniversary. We got married on a hot steamy June night in the Washington DC area. During the official part of the event, the skies opened up and it poured. After that, the heat and humidity [...]  Read more

Investing In Token Focused Funds

At USV, we have been active in the blockchain/crypto sector since 2011. At this time, we have direct investments in nine companies/projects in the crypto space and one exited investment. Companies in the blockchain/crypto sector make up about 15% of [...]  Read more